Digitális és módszertani fordulat a sajtókutatásban
Digital and methodological turn in the study of the press

A ‘distant reading’ of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century English newspapers concerning Hungary

Summary/Abstract: The digital turn in the study of the press is illustrated by the fact that in the last decade an enormous number of newspapers and periodicals have become accessible and searchable in electronic archives. The paper begins by critically discussing the current (2013) infant state of digital scholarship with a special focus on the methodological possibilities and challenges posed by the analysis of ‘big data/text’ in the humanities. It presents a revised version of a digital method – introduced by the author in 2010 – which, among others, may be used to investigate and visualize the evolution, distribution and frequency of words in digital press archives, as well as to explore long-scale trends and patterns in historical, literary, linguistic and cultural processes. This paper also highlights the strengths and limitations of this method by giving a case study of how the representations of Hungary in the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century English press may be examined. It provides a ‘distant reading’ of those newspaper articles of the Burney Collection of the British Library which make reference to Hungary and Hungarians, and places the preliminary findings in their historical context. For example, it explains the increase in references to Hungary in certain years. The distant and close readings of this largely ignored English press material concerning Hungary signpost new areas for research into the English public perceptions of contemporary Hungary, as well as the diplomatic, political, cultural and economic aspects of English–Hungarian relations during the period.

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